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Topic: Using workers from one hive to make multiple nucs in a stack with excluders (Read 5952 times)

Hey everybody, I had a thought this morning and please give me your opinions.

If I had a strong two deep brood chamber, put in a bar of queen cups, bred say four queens. Then if I took two deeps, put vertical dividers and entrance in there and two frames from the second brood chamber with bees and brood, put them in each division and one frame of undrawn comb or old drawn foundation, put queen excluders on top of the first brood chamber, newspaper, a divided full depth with queen cup, another queen excluded on top and another divided full depth the same as the other would that be a good way of building up sufficient quantities of workers to start nucs? Or would the workers in the hive have a hissy fit working for five queens? Then when numbers were high enough, the queens were mated and laying, I'd take those three frames from each division and make up five frame nucs.

I did a variation of this theme this spring and it worked well. I cut two grooves in each end of a deep to support masonite deviders. I made a double screen bottom and included two strips of wood for the masonite deviders to rest on. Drill a 3/4" entrance o n the middle of three ends for your entrances. I made little cupaloes to cut the wind. Now measure and cut your masonite so it sticks out of the top of the hive body about three inches. Now make a 2 1/2" by 16 1/4th by 19 7/8th box also grooved for the masonite deviders. Cut three migratory covers to fit the individual compartments. stock your 3 way mini nucs with a good frame of brood with lots of bees and a frame of mostly honey with some brood and bees and a frame of drawn comb if you have it, foundation if you don't. Put the brood toward the middle on the outside pair of compartments. In all three place the frame of foundation or drawn comb to the respective outside to give the bees room for expansion. Now place the 2 1/2" rim over the masonite so you have a space above the top bars of the nuc frames. This is room for pollen patties and blocks of fondant or sandwich baggies full of 1:1 syrup with a 1" puncture on the top of the baggie after it is laid on it's side. Warning! Make sure the baggie seal is perfect. The baggies can only be 3/4 full. They lay flat on the cluster and the bees walk up on top of the syrup kept warm by the cluster and not a single bee drowns! Warning place the three way on the heat donor colony BEFORE puttng on the baggies and carefully slitting the hole in the top of the air bubble. Put the three migratory type covers on. With the thickness of the migratory cover, the masonite deviders should be just to the top of the covers. Cover all three smaller covers with another cover to keep rain or melting snow from dripping in. These mini nucs are only big enough for about three weeks before the bees grow crowded. Then move them into five frames of the same style for another three weeks and by then, it should be warm enough to put them in their own hive body or you can leave them in the five frame double and add another double also devided. Then as I discovered today, I couldn't lift the darn thing back on the donor, so I had to move it and devide it. My two frame splits made April 15th are now filling their second hive body and at a minimum will produce enough to winter on. We are having a fantastic flow now and they may well make a deep of surplus. I refilled the three way late in May and those three colonies are now at 5, 6 and 10 frames of bees, brood and honey. The ten frame was the weakest of the three when I had to move them because they had outgrown their quarters. It inherited the field force of the other two and my measure to resupply the two I moved, failed because I screwed up! The heat makes a lot of difference. I had thought of trying it one more time and trying to winter five frame nucs, but I just don't have the time this year. I am curious if I can winter smaller nucs. That was the plan with the two I had to split out today, but they were too successful I guess you would say. If anyone wants pictures of my Rube Goldberg, send me an email address. I am not smart enough to post pics to these forums.

Nice report Vance. I’m still trying to sort out in my noggin exactly what OzBuzz was describing vs what you did. The way I read the thread, OzBuzz was hoping to use a communal workforce to work on the brood from multiple queens in the same deep at the same time and boost nuc production that way. He was using queen excluders to divide a deep vs the solid boards you are describing.

In your case (VanceG) it sounds like your plan was to use a communal heat source to boost the nucs as opposed to using a communal work force that could slip thru queen excluders.

Vance did you have any moisture issues sharing heat from your heat donor colony? Did your divided deep/nuc have some sort of dedicated top vent?

If you are still around blue bee, I had no moisture problem but I live in dry country with single digit relative humidity most of the summer. It is cold spring country here and the heat sharing was a definate advantage to the small splits. I had no top entrances in the top colonies but the outside two had entrances that were midlevel. Everyone is wintering well. I am building 5 to 15 more of this style three ways and plan to produce nucs to overwinter and sell 2013 or if I am feeling good enough run for honey production.

In your first post, I was under the impression that you were using your 3 way divided deep box to help jump start early spring splits. Now in your second post you mention overwintering said nucs.

Are you over wintering 3 frame nucs in a single divided deep body? Or are you making note that all your splits you started last year are successfully wintering in whatever size box they eventually grew into?